We are rarely seen as we truly are. Each person we encounter creates their own mental picture of us, shaped by their experiences, expectations, and biases. Likewise, we see ourselves in fragments, filtered through memory, emotion, and habit. Everyday perception acts like a prism: it breaks the self into shards, yet those shards hint at a greater whole.

One way to understand the self is through the distinction between strings and loops. The string-self represents our linear perception of existence: birth, life, death, one frame at a time. The loop-self, on the other hand, reflects the continuous, cyclical flow of energy consciousness and recurring patterns, spirals, and currents that return again and again. From the inside, we experience life like a string, but in truth, our existence is always looping.

Across cultures, archetypes appear as guides for navigating these loops.
Anubis stands at thresholds, guarding the passage between worlds and representing the loop at critical transitions.

Jesus embodies the transcendent self, moving beyond linear suffering, demonstrating eternal love and presence, and pointing toward the flow that exists beyond time.

Buddha shows the possibility of perceiving the cycles of life and stepping into liberation from them.

The Monkey King navigates boundaries between worlds, bending time and identity with playful mastery.

Dragons and serpents, too, symbolize this eternal flow. Whether as the Ouroboros, coiling to devour its own tail, as Nagas guarding thresholds in Eastern traditions, or as cosmic dragons of myth, these beings represent coiled energy, cycles, and the eternal return.

Contraction and expansion, creation and destruction, are never purely negative or positive they are simply movements of energy responding to priority within the loop. They are Polarity.

In a cosmic sense, existence mirrors the interplay of black holes and white holes implosion and explosion, absorption and release. And what are they if not portals to the field of infinite potential?

Labels like “good” and “bad” are human constructs but energy simply flows through thresholds, loops, and dimensions. Archetypes interact with these flows to maintain balance, continuity, and growth. Implosion and explosion.
To see oneself as a loop rather than a string transforms your perception of life, death, relationships, and challenges.
Recognising the cyclical patterns in energy, archetypes, and perception allows us to navigate reality with awareness rather than reaction.

Fragmented views whether projected by others or by our own mind are merely points on the loop, never the totality of our being. In glimpsing the loop-self, we see not just a single life, but the unfolding of consciousness across dimensions, an eternal pattern coiling through time and space.
